Big Picture – Mesmarriah Miracle

22. Raisin Debt

You never know who’s gonna pop a pearl of wisdom on you! One of the lessons I learned in one of my careers—the one as a producer and writer of television—was given to me by a most unlikely and somewhat disrespected source. Many times people we end up not liking very much actually have a purpose and a lesson for us in our life. This lesson came from a television producer, a big fish in a little pond. He believed at the time he was a big fish and so did I. I have since come to see maybe the reason he seemed to be a big fish was that his pond was really a puddle and there he was flopping around creating what seemed to be big splashes. How did I know he actually presented me with a lesson for my life, a piece to my puzzle, a Dot for my pertinent pocket? (Post 2) Because here it is, decades later, retained!

So Producer Fish told me in one of his pontificating moments that everything in a show has to have a Raisin Debt. (That’s what I heard: Raisin Debt.) Well, I wanted Producer Fish to think I was the bright and knowing young writer that I was trying to pass myself off to be and that I could save his show…but ‘Raisin Debt?’ Yish, my little memory banks were just racing index after index, reference after reference, back even into the offline archives to find some semblance of a meaning or obscure reference for ‘Raisin Debt.’ A reference to recent grape crop failures? Singing California cereals? Gross National Product Indices, commodities? It’s a wonder my eyes weren’t fairly spinning in my head like a slot machine looking for three cherries…or in this case, raisins…raisins in debt. Alas I was never able to find the reference or manage a look of understanding necessary to let Producer Fish know I knew what the hell he was talking about, and I was forced to ask him, “Raisin Debt?”

“Yes.” He smiled at his opportunity to pontificate, “It’s French. Raison d’etre, a ‘reason to be.’

Amazingly, out of the mouths of fish sometimes plops a pearl.

He, of course, was talking in his limited puddle concept of writing a television show. He felt everything in the show had to have a Reason to Be. But when you hear a Universal Truth, well, I immediately clicked on a bigger picture concept of a Reason to Be!

Everything has a raison d’etre (Raisin Debt)…

…a Reason to Be.

Applying Big Picture strokes to it: Yes, we all carry in our souls a Raisin Debt, a reason to be. A reason why we Are. A reason why we Are Here. A reason why this soul chose this body and those parents and this life and all those aggravating circumstances, that trait, those tendencies, that skill, that fallibility.

Yet, we don’t live our lives understanding we have a Reason for our existence, nor work to find what our Reason to Be is. A reason why we are here. A reason we were born. Something in this lifetime to accomplish, to learn, to teach, to contribute, to save, to live through, to experience. The good, the bad, the boring; the indifferent, the ugly. Living our life with the precept that Everything has a Reason to Be in our life. Once you realize there’s a Purpose in there somewhere, it sheds light on the Bigger Picture. The realization that there is a reason for it all becomes the seed bed for acceptance and learning and growing.

Maybe the reason we don’t live our lives understanding that there is a raison d’etre for our life is because it can be a long-term, open-ended project that stretches through our whole life long—a life’s work. And we’ve all been refocused on 10-second soundbites, 20-minute half-hours, a Cliff Notes’ version of life.

It’s sometimes hard, focused, and, lots of times, thwarted work. We run the risk that we may never finally dot the I’s, cross the T’s and put a name on our Reason to Be. It may be like the daily picture puzzles I work. They offer no picture to go by. Instead, you put the puzzle together by observation and instinct. If you actually look for the picture to go by, it says, “Picture will be revealed after you complete the Puzzle.” Maybe we only discover our raison d’etre after we exit this life. Maybe that’s why so few people live their life with the purpose of finding out.

But If One Were Looking for a Raisin Debt, Where Would One Start?

Most importantly, it takes seeing every other human as Soul. Regardless of any external distinguishing marks, colors, creeds, religions, or orientations. Realizing that each and every body is wholly and holy encasing a glowing ember of the Eternal—no matter what name you call It—and especially no matter what flotsam and jetsam and BS they have piled on top of that ember! It still burns. You now open your vistas to seeing connection to all things, all people. Everybody’s. Got. A. Soul. It’s the internal, Eternal Guidance System we were given to lead us. Tap into it. You’ll feel and find your Raison d’etre.

Secondly, it takes a kind of faith, maybe even a strong kind of faith, to live your life with the precept that Everything has a Reason to Be in your life. Yes, the tormenting, traumatic, and tragic. Accepting that “Everything happens for a reason,” opens the door to letting that Eternal ember lead. Maybe it’s just the people you encounter—to learn from or survive from, or to reconnect like you’ve known each other for-ever. There have been Dots dropped through the ages: Behind every cloud is a silver lining. It’s why my Family and Children’s Services counsellor had me list everything ‘bad’ that happened and hurt, then try to find something good that came from it.

It takes focus and intent: You want to find the Reason to Be for your life. Seek and ye shall find, sayeth the Bible. See with eyes that truly see, listen with ears that truly hear, and live with a heart that seeks to understand. See people and circumstances as pieces of the puzzle to be put together to reveal the answer, the Big Picture of why you Are. See how many answers you come up with to “why is this happening.” What am I getting out of the circumstances of my life? Squeeze the juice right out of every raw circumstance!

Everybody’s got a Raisin Debt! Everybody’s got a Reason to Be in this life. If you ever wondered why the Home Page for Mesmarriah Miracle is Raison d’etre, this is the reason. Mesmarriah Miracle is just looking to find a Reason to Be for Life—with a Capital L. Defining It. Naming It. Living It.

8. How Do You Know You Know Someone You’ve Never Met Before

So much of what we learn in Life can only be recognized by looking back, sometimes over years or decades. It’s actually very important to press Pause and look back occasionally. We get so lost in eyes-on-the-ground-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other-everyday-minutiae. We need the curiosity to look back over the years. Assess. Where have we been? Where have we come from? See how much we’ve come through. It’s sorta like heading up 30,000 feet in the air and taking a look-see—seeing the beauty of the patchwork quilt land below. Perspective. You can only get a Big Picture from Perspective. Perspective and Paying Attention.

Once awakened, I felt I was ‘tabula rasa,’ blank slate, for what was to happen next. Life continued to roll on in the day-to-day job, home, children, husband, friends. But something felt different. It made me all eyes and ears and heart and mind and feelings and anything else that would help supply data of what to do, what lay ahead, what might be expected of me. I laid any preconceived notions aside, wouldn’t formulate my feelings about beliefs until I collected data.

“Trying to give the living reality of the Self a constant amount of daily attention is like trying to live simultaneously on two levels or in two different worlds. One gives one’s mind, as before, to outer duties, but at the same time one remains alert for hints and signs, both in dreams and in external events, that the Self uses to symbolize its intentions – the direction in which the life stream is moving.” Carl Jung, “Man and His Symbols (MAHS) p. 212

So it is with Paying Attention and the Perspective gained by having lived and thought longer about all this, that I have garnered enough data to postulate several theories and/or beliefs, in my life, for my Life. All in the name of trying to understand just why a Creator wanted us human beings to be a propagated species, and what that Creator might have wanted from us as that species. It may feel like I’m jumping ahead of myself here, but this does tie in with The Catalyst.

Here are the Dots: Synchronistic events led me to The Catalyst who jolted me out of my life of being asleep. What made me suspect (and search to confirm) that this was not just a love affair but something more? Something intended just for me? What was I to do with this awakening? What was expected of me once I felt ‘awake?’ What made me feel compelled to find these answers and not just take the easy road and continue being asleep? It would be a challenge: the man or the mission. And what part was the prince to play once he had awakened me?

One foot in front of the other, one day after the next, one year, then another, I strove to get answers to the myriad of questions that populated my wondering life! I had the “Who?” the “Where? the “When,” even the “What?” But the peskiest of questions is “Why?” I needed the “Why?” Why did this prince find me and how was his kiss able to awaken me?

I was open-minded, open-eyed, open-hearted to what experience came my way. Tabula rasa. Once ‘open’ to the Call to look inside, finding your parts and pieces, doing the work to become whole, you sense you have tapped into some unnamed ether or Part of You that starts throwing breadcrumbs, sending signs and synchronicities, finding the right books, running into the right person, hearing the right words, et al. Where does that come from? How do all those things just ‘show up’ to lead you forward into the unknown?

The Schematic of Life

If you believe you have a soul and that it is eternal—well, you may not, so I’ll qualify that. I have researched and reached my own singular conclusion: I believe not just that we have a soul, but that we are soul; it is the eternal part of us. Therefore, it was ‘before’ and will be ‘after’ and ‘forever,’ right? I believe our soul already knows eternal things—before, during and after. It knows the future (and all possible futures).

Watching my life progress like a series of stepping stones after wakedom, I came to believe we come to this life with a plan, a schematic if you will, of what lessons we need to learn in this life, how to accomplish them with all of the possible gees and haws of free will to choose right or wrong.

It’s like your soul, the place of the unknown (or Unknown), knows which lessons you chose to learn this life, including but not limited to, all the possible-option-futures compounded in the choices you make at every moral decision-time.

In other words, each time you come to a decision, it’s a fork in the road. The decision you make takes you down one fork only. You have chosen one future over the other. The next decision is a fork, and the future that comes with that choice—which looks different from the future you would have had if you chose the other fork.

A new future, a new life at every decision you make. Your life—what you came here to learn, why you chose this particular set of circumstances, the souls you planned to meet and work with or work through—all have meaning. The ups, the downs, the mistakes, the misfortunes, the milestones, the good, the bad, and the boring—all are contained in the Schematic you designed—in the place you were before you were born and will be after you die. In the eternal, you have the wherewithal to know it all, plan it all, in every possible, simple-and-complex decision you will ever make, every future you can exponentially choose.

Oh, it’s not just me who extrapolated this way. Listen to this Dot that was dropped and I picked up on somewhere along the path:

“There’s a wonderful paper by Schopenhauer, called ‘An Apparent Intention of the Fate of the Individual,’ in which he points out that when you are a certain age—the age I am now—and look back over your life, it seems to be almost as orderly as a composed novel. And just as in Dickens’ novels, little accidental meetings and so forth turn out to be main features in the plot, so in your life. And what seem to have been mistakes at the time, turn out to be directive crises. And then he asks: ‘Who wrote this novel?’ Life seems as though it were planned… ” Conversations with Joseph Campbell “An Open Life” (Schopenhauer 1788-1860)

(Note the “—and look back over your life.” He pressed Pause.)

He even says it right there, “little accidental meetings (The Catalyst) and so forth turn out to be main features in the plot” and then, “Who wrote this novel?” It’s very easy for me to get from there to the conclusion of a Schematic. I also want to make it perfectly clear, I knew none of this when I took that first leap into the deep dark abyss. I want credit for that courage! I was following something that can only be described as some “inner” urging. And it’s not that I’m that special.

After accumulating more knowledge and understanding with more reading, more learning, more asking questions, I now believe we all have some inner urging to find our true Selves, not just play assigned roles our entire life. Hence, the Myth: the knights being called to search for the Holy Grail on their own paths.

Here’s another Dot that I recognized and put in my ‘pertinent pocket’ from the book a father wrote of his daughter’s descent into madness and his search in every nook and cranny for the mysterium that would bring her back.

Carl Jung has written about the importance of seemingly happenstance events in our lives. He called it synchronicity, implying that there is a logic and a destiny to such events, a hidden blueprint that derives from our own particular natures, or the force of the world around us, or perhaps from a supernatural power beyond human understanding. To the extent that our conscious choices move in harmony with this design, our lives find fulfillment. If this is so, there exists the possibility that the suffering and the joy, the defeats and the final victory, were all part of a highly personal yet supremely cosmic pattern that remains, and may always remain, a mystery.” Frederich Flach, M.D. in “Rickie”

Looking at life this way should give a certain reassurance. Certainly it paints a bigger picture to the minutiae. You can learn (sometimes hard) lessons without feeling sad, disillusioned, disappointed or bummed—knowing they are merely lessons that you chose to go through. You can sorta lean into them knowing you’re learning something…keep looking for that. What is the lesson? Keep heart, eyes, ears open. It’s your story; you already know the outcome—like a Perry Mason program where you know, you’ll win the case!

So when I asked, ‘How do you know you know someone you’ve never met before?’ It’s because your Life overlays with the Schematic you planned…

Have you ever met someone and immediately fell into link-step with them in practically every perfect way? You both remark, “It’s like I’ve always known you.” Well, you probably have always known them—you just don’t remember on this plane.

What about those people who say, “I always knew I was going to be a (fill-in-the-blank, singer, sculptor, scientist, et al) from the time I was real little.” And they became GREAT at it? Were they born to do that? How did they know?

Geniuses, prodigies in all the arts and sciences—can’t be all ‘nurture.’ Where did the ‘nature’ come from? Did they bring it with them in their soul? And if so, how did their soul get that much talent or intelligence?

It just seems that some people were born to do what they do (or did) in life. It’s like they planned it, or it was predestined. Read “A Prayer for Owen Meany.” Everything in the Schematic of his peculiar life was designed for just one life-saving cataclysm.

The goal of Life may be trying to align your decisions with the Schematic you designed—“Right Choosing.” Leaning into some unconscious directing for making the right decisions to learn the lessons you came here to learn—the good, the bad, the boring.

Have you ever Landed in a Plane Backwards?

If you are new to Mesmarriah Miracle, it is best to start at Post 1 and continue in numbered sequence, like connecting Dots.

5. Synchronicity Dropping Dots.

When you wake up to Life, you’re looking for any breadcrumbs that might give you a clue. You are for all practical purposes in a foreign land and making your way forward as best you can on sheer curiosity and stamina and determination. You have questions, lots of questions and looking hard for some answers. While ‘living some distant day into the answer’ may be comforting, it is hardly a boon for patience!

You wait. You go with the flow. You let time pass which is required to prove your patience. Your energy is directed forward, and energy put forth creates. All of a sudden, you’re rewarded with a leg-up, a fast forward, an ‘aha’ moment that sends your entire energy system into hyperdrive!

Finding Synchronicity Synchronistically.

I can’t show a montage of pictures to indicate “time passes” like they do in movies, but time had been and was passing. Somewhere between five and seven years since I ran into The Catalyst that jolted me out of being asleep. I’d skipped through the music industry, hit a lick in television production. By this time, I had ‘flowed’ into being a writer by occupation–albeit marketing/advertising–but I was realizing I could write. Part of me even felt in all the repetitious projects, I was obediently doing my “sums” or “times tables.” Rote. Writing dust jacket flap and back cover copy for a national publisher was teaching me to take a lump of clay, shape and mold it into a piece of art capable enough to sell a book. Again and again. Lump. Art. Rote.

Being freelance, I had a certain control over my own time. As long as I met deadlines, sure, I could take some time off.

It was a sunny day, with no deadlines looming, so I packed my ever-present notebook and pen, some books, and a bite to eat for a leisurely drive down The Natchez Trace to revive spirit and soul. Fifty miles per hour limit, shady, curvy, hilly, lovely overlooks. I stopped here for an overlook, there for an historic marker, ending up at Meriwether Lewis Death and Burial Site. Yes, that Meriwether Lewis of Lewis and Clark, the adventurers who mapped out this virgin and unknown land.

I read. I wrote. I sat under a big tree beside the flat markers of the Pioneer Cemetery there. I toured the grounds, read the intriguing but brief signs indicating that while Lewis was killed at this place, it was uncertain as to the circumstances—intruder/murder or suicide? I’m not sure why I was so fascinated with the ambiguity and mystery of his death at this place, but it was such that I vowed I was going to get more details and draw my own conclusion.

Upon my return to civilization, I went immediately to the library (yes, this was in the day of the library and I was into Books). To the Biography Section (in alphabetical order by subject). Here’s the default setting of a book lover: if you’re gonna get one book in the L’s for Lewis, why not one in the J’s for James Joyce and, what the heck, here’s a name I’ve heard somewhere before here in the J’s, Carl G. Jung.

I made short shrift of James Joyce—he was just too far out for me to identify with his life whatsoever. I didn’t even bother to finish that book.

I formed my own opinion about Meriwether Lewis’ death after reading his bio—murder, not suicide. A couple of reasons. First, The Trace was a boon to highway robbers as it was the way home by land for men who had floated their crops down the Mississippi to sell and they were carrying cash. Second, Lewis was a mere 34 years old and headed back to Philadelphia to edit a book on his great expedition; I felt no one with as adventurous a spirit as he exhibited would have taken his own life as was hinted at in those oblique signs posted at the park.

Then came time for the Jung book, Memories, Dreams and Reflections. (Did I instinctively save the best for last?) It was the next turning point in my life, a whole loaf of bread, forget the crumbs! It was a lighted beacon in my stumbling, asking-questions darkness. In today’s vernacular—“OMG!” In the vernacular of that day, all I could utter was ”This man’s been readin’ my mail.”

The things he wrote about were delineating what I’d been experiencing since “I woke up.” It was more than just confirmation and validation. He gave me the “Why” that I so desperately craved. I would read a passage—“yes!’—and get up and run around the house to expend the excited energy that was pulsing through me! In my journal, I noted: “…reading his bio was exhilarating; I kept saying, ‘wonderful,’ ‘wondrous,’ ‘thank you’ because it was so re-affirming to me.” I had lived some distant day into an answer—answers, in fact! I was getting lots of clues, answers, reaffirmations, validations, new information—check check check! Fast forward propulsion! Hyperdrive!

Connecting the Dots:

If I hadn’t laid out from writing assignments to take a day off; if I hadn’t ended up at Meriwether Lewis Park on my drive; if I hadn’t stopped, got out, walked the park; if I hadn’t been intrigued enough by Lewis’ death to go to a library and get a book not only about him but, what the heck, how about some guy named Carl Jung; and then that book telling me about EVERYTHING that had been happening to me in my new “awakened” state (in the past five years)…

I’m sorry, but that just does not happen by accident, now, does it?

That’s called Synchronicity. Incarnate.

Think of it—finding answers I was seeking for years…in a book…because I went to a park and was curious about Meriwether Lewis. There’s no cause and effect. Synchronicity—two things linked with no common causality.

Synchronicity Marks the Dots for You.

Synchronicity, or meaningful coincidence as some timid people are wont to call it, is a flaming coincidence that even you can’t ignore–and it has a message, a meaning, especially for you. If you recognize Synchronicity occuring in your life, stop and ask: what is it underscoring for me? Something here has meaning and importance. What am I to see? Of further mention here: Synchronicity seems to become more prevalent when you ‘wake up’ and start ‘seeking’ or asking your questions of Life. Or, maybe it’s just because you are now ‘awake’ and noticing it.

First, synchronicities are only seen by those with wide-open eyes that see and only heard with ears that hear (that’s biblical!) Second, you have a feeling like it’s a connection with some unseen helper who’s in on the journey with you. Third, it’s like an underscore—you know, like when you underscore or highlight a passage that has meaning and significance to you? That you want to remember. It may give you new information on your Life, that “aha!” moment, a light-bulb going on. Many times it reinforces something you just learned about yourself, an affirmation, so-to-speak, that you got it right and are headed in the right direction. But it always makes you feel connected to something bigger, something benevolent that’s laying down a few breadcrumbs for you to follow on your way to safety. When you experience Synchronicity in your life, look around. There’s a Dot dropping somewhere!

If it hadn’t been for a string, yes, string, I tell you, of synchronicities,

I would never have met The Catalyst that woke me up.

If you’re new to Mesmarriah Miracle, it’s best to start at Post #1 and

continue in numbered sequence, like Connecting the Dots.

4. Clinging I Shall Die of Boredom.

“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life.”
“The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for. The damned thing in the cave that was so dreaded has become the center.”
Joseph Campbell, “A Joseph Campbell Companion,” p. 24

I’m sure I got the flow seed planted after reading Richard Bach’s “Illusions.” It was a Dot for sure (he dropped several of them in that book). I can’t be sure if it was dropped just before, after, or coincided with the event of My Catalyst. Reading the book was easy, especially when he hooked me with the very first words, “There was a Master come unto the earth, born in the holy land of Indiana…” (my home state—how could I not read on!)

There is the part in the intro where he talks about the creatures in the river who “cling” as a way of life. Then one creature decides he’s going to let go and see where the crystal river takes him, because, clinging he shall surely die of boredom. He trusts that the river knows where it is going, and so (with much fear and admonishment from his peer clingers) he let go to go with the flow of the river. A Dot dropped and I was in the ‘let it flow, let it flow, let it flow” mode.

Or, maybe my entire life was a part of ‘let it flow,” and I just had to recognize and name it.

In the age of career specialization I was a generalist. Dig deep into just one career path? No. I would try one career path, be there long enough to see behind the curtain and opt out. I was a systems analyst for Blue Cross-Blue Shield because someone recognized I was a problem solver, organized, efficient, and could manage people. An industrial psychologist who tested all BC-BS management said, “You ranked in the 94^th Percentile of Upper Level Male Managers, BUT, you have no goals to be president of BC-BS”—as if that were a bad thing. He was right—I certainly did not have goals of becoming president of BC-BS. I opted out.

I moved to the country music industry because my husband wanted to be a songwriter. We moved to Nashville so why shouldn’t I be in the music industry also? Three years with a major record label run with a mafia-management style of rewards and punishments, and I opted out again. Seeing behind the curtain is always eye-opening—and a test to see just how much you’re willing to pay for the pretense.

I left it to fate (aka the flow) to take me to my next career, and my organizational skills took me to becoming Associate Producer (the logistics person) for a new television show. Out of the music business, and into television. One season of organizing and logistics, and I decided I could write the show, too. I did two sample scripts, and the producer who had hired me for my organizational abilities, agreed. Soon I was a writer—television, print, marketing, publishing—writing for anybody who would hire me to hone my skills. Just going with the flow, where the flow would take me.

Jump. It’s Not as Wide as You Think. (Or) There Are No Pumas

Let’s just say “waking up” sets you up with lots of questions…lots…of…questions! Try and describe that to friends and about all you’ll hear is, “Awake? Of course you’re awake. You’re talking. There’s no question there.” Hard to explain unless you’ve been there.

Questioning—especially the “Why” question—and “seeking answers” is trying, anguishing work, and most times tinged with a bit o’ fear (hence why it’s “the road less travelled”). Looking inward for answers to questions can be especially fearful because somehow we innately ‘believe’ we’re hiding some sort of monster inside. (I have yet to determine where we got this—unless it’s the deeply ingrained ‘original sin’ that’s been taught us by a loving church.) We fear if we dare peek inside, we’ll let loose the monster on the world. Some sort of beast is hidden inside! We’ll be out of control!

Yes, I know this from personal experience. I have feared the monster and asked that exact question.

When working with a wonderful counsellor whose name, Mrs. True, said it all, I had begun to feel good about myself—getting self-esteem can do that for you. I remember specifically asking her (because I felt good), “Aren’t you afraid you’ll create a monster (meaning me)?” She just laughed and reassured me, “No, I just want you to throw back that curly hair of yours and laugh.”

Please believe me, I have looked: There are no monsters inside. It’s ok to look.

I believe that is why so many people are afraid to ask questions of themselves, to look inside. They fear they will face pumas in the crevasse. (That’s an old Smothers Brothers routine—Tommy Smothers was afraid of the pumas in the crevasse, and his brother had to convince him, “There are no pumas in the crevasse, Tommy”—for those who are wondering where that came from…or for those who may remember!) I chose to believe Dickie Smothers! (That was a Dot dropped waaaay back!)

Asking questions of Life and looking inward for answers, yes, that requires facing the (phantom) pumas in the abyss (or crevasse). Joseph Campbell came through again, reassuring me with this myth:

“A bit of advice
Given to a young Native American
At the time of his initiation:
As you go the way of life,
You will see a great chasm.

Jump.
It is not as wide as you think.”
― Joseph Campbell

Dick Smothers would add…’and there are NO PUMAS in the crevasse!’ Those are the pumas we fear are lurking inside us if we ever look. (Who knew Dickie Smothers was a mythologist!)

Reassured by both Dickie Smothers and Joseph Campbell, jump I did. More asking. More seeking. More questioning. More reading. More learning. More dreams. More Dots. A whole lot of “Why me’s?” because answers were slow in coming. (Patience, remember?) Some bon-a-fide gnashing of teeth involved. A good friend who’d listened to me gnash teeth, wail, found a poem and gave it to me as salve. It came first as “Anon” but, as the poem itself told me, I would ‘live along some distant day into the answer.’ I would find its true source.

I magnetized it to my refrigerator.

Have you heard the term, Synchronicity? We’ll get more detail on it later. It’s a term that pops up again and again when you enter the forest on your own path. Synchronicity may feel more like a breadcrumb you find on your way, assuring you that you’re on the right path home. A few years, yes, years, after receiving this Anon poem, another friend gave me a book as a birthday gift, “Letters to a Young Poet” by Rainer Maria Rilke. In that book was the very verse that was on my fridge:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart

and try to love the questions themselves,

like locked rooms and like books

that are now written in a very foreign tongue.

Do not now seek the answers,

which cannot be given you

because you would not be able to live them.

And the point is, to live everything.

Live the questions now.

Perhaps you will then gradually,

without noticing it,

live along some distant day into the answer.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke

Salve for an anguished heart for sure. It was like getting a primer for learning a new language and here was my first translation. Love the questions themselves. Locked rooms. Books in a foreign tongue. Live everything. Reaffirmation that I was not alone in the experience I was having. Others had gone before me and were dropping their own Dots and breadcrumbs for me to follow and be encouraged by. And somehow, they would make sure I found the ones I needed. How could I not trod on?

The original Anon paper stayed magnetized to my refrigerator for years til it had stains and curled edges. It reinforced for me that, indeed, I would ‘live along some distant day into the answer” (and answers) that I sought.

Synchronicity… A Dot dropped one year connected to a Dot a few years later. Check-Check.

How I Found Synchronicity Synchronistically.

1. Life Gives Us Clues, As Well as Lemons.

Life is gonna hand you lemons. Count on it. Making lemonade is passe. Look for clues instead.

I’d say I’ve had my fair share of lemons in life just like most people. I fought, struggled to understand why. What was I doing wrong? How to fix it? How to make a refreshing glass of lemonade, make sweet out of sour. As I struggled my way through it, I’d always find myself asking the question “Why?” Every “Why?” seemed to take me to bigger and bigger questions, so I’ve come to believe that life hands you lemons so you will start asking questions. Because most times, behind every sour lemon is a clue.

What started me asking the BIG questions of Life?

I’ve always had something bitin’ my butt, as they say. Something that made me feel I was supposed to be doing “something” but I couldn’t quite figure out what “it” was—no matter how anguished or intent I was to find out. I was teased (enticed?) with several dreams that were so striking, so mystifying, they could not be forgotten.

In one dream it was a calming voice from a cave behind me that muted my frantic fighting actions, “You Will Be an Organizer.”

What? When?

Another: when asked what my name was, I heard ‘me’ tell people my name was “Mesmarriah Miracle.”

What a miraculous name. Where did that come from? Why?

Yet another where an unknown man had ‘saved’ me and some women in some way. In the dream I was prompted to thank him and ask him for his autograph. He smiled knowingly and wrote vertically on a board:

Never heard of him. I spelled it out in my dream journal exactly as he had in the dream. GURDJIEFF. Wikipedia would inform me he was an Armenian philosopher and spiritual teacher some considered a mystic in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Why me and why that name?

In a third dream, I was flying through the air with a young boy on my back. I thought I was showing him the joys of flying when he made a move that made us even more aerodynamic. Surprised, I asked him, ‘how did you know how to do that?” And he answered: “I am the continuum. I am the beginning and the end.”

Heavy duty words to me! I had to look up ‘continuum’ in the dictionary to confirm its meaning. A continuum is sort of like it sounds—a continuous whole, but made up of elements that vary and change/grow almost imperceptibly to get from one opposite to another opposite…like the continuum that stretches from cold to hot. Good and bad stand at opposite ends of a continuum. In psychology, it’s the premise that to achieve peak physical, emotional, and mental health in an adult life, a person must be treated with great care during their infancy and childhood. The continuum of a whole life stretching between birth and death—made up of like elements that change/grow imperceptibly to culminate in the opposite.

Would you, could you just ignore dreams like that?

Spread out over years, these sporadic and intriguing dreams were fuel to the fire of finding answers to My Big Questions of Life. Each hung in my subconscious like a bright orange, freshly scrubbed organic gluten-free carrot, dangling just beyond my grasp.

They had to mean something. Were they clues? Were they leading me? Where to? I searched: nowhere on the entire internet was there anything comparable to the name Mesmarriah Miracle. When I related the story of this name to my son-in-law some 30-years later, he was sure someone already had that domain name. He checked. No one. Thirty years after I was given the name, no one else had it.

I’d never seen nor heard the name Gurdjieff before in my conscious life. But researching him revealed he’d written books, had followers who believed in his work—described as:

“Gurdjieff believed that people cannot perceive reality in their current condition because they do not possess a unified consciousness but rather live in a state of a hypnotic “waking sleep”.

“Man lives his life in sleep, and in sleep he dies.” P.D. Ouspensky (1949), In Search of the Miraculous)

As a result of this each person perceives things from a completely subjective perspective. He asserted that people in their typical state function as unconscious automatons, but that a person can “wake up” and become a different sort of human being altogether.Jacob Needleman, “G. I. Gurdjieff and His School”

As you read these first 14 posts, can you see why I might have had call to thank the man who saved me and request his autograph?

The little boy who is the continuum (or Continuum), is he the concept of God, the beginning and the end? (Except ye be as little children?) What was that saying to me?

Did any of these tie together? Were they the parts and pieces for a Purpose to Life? Were they stepping stones to where I needed to go next? Carrots, stepping stones, lemons, (aka Dots)—I had to think Something other than me or my conscious mind was involved. What was “it” (or “It”)?

I had to name ‘it/It.” I had to see if there really was “A Big(ger) Picture” to Life. Life lemons cannot be the end all, be all for life. There has to be something ‘behind’ it. There has to be something “more,” something to learn from it. With that as a guiding force, there will always be a bigger picture if you ask and look…turning lemons into clues.

If you are new to Mesmarriah Miracle, You might find it best to start at Post 1 and continue in numbered sequence, like connecting Dots.